Cardiac Regeneration
by Verve
Summary: The new Mess Sergeant, "Bernie" Owens, knows first hand that you don't have to be at the front line to become a casuality of war; and some of the worst wounds are the ones that never leave a mark. [Constructive reviews appreciated on MASH attempt.]
1. Default Chapter

I don't own any of this except for what I own. No havey de money. No makey de money. No wanty de money.

Author's Note (aka gratuitous pleading for reviews time. Yipee): This started as a need I had for non-Margret (sorry kids, I like it, but I need more sometimes…) romance with Hawk. Hopefully it's not like the other randomly-added-chick-fics out there, but if it is let me know. Here's to the readers, and another for the reviewers. 

***

His post-op shift was almost over, but Captain Pierce could already feel the familiar restlessness rising up in his chest. The clipboard rustled a little and swung lazily as he hooked onto the bed of the patient he'd just finished going over with the nurse on duty. Looking around at the standard issue tent filled with standard issue cots and standard issue blankets covering standard issue wounded soldiers. Walking over ot the duty log he flipped through it pointlessly and suddenly remembered he hadn't filled in the date and day when he'd signed in. He hadn't known. 

He'd been feeling down for days, and had plenty of reason for it. The stream of wounded had been particularly endless, and more were predicted. His last good night sleep had been back in the states, and to top it all off the mess crew had contracted the worst cases of hepatitis this side of the war he'd ever seen. They couldn't risk an outbreak with the casualty level so high, and the sick staff had been sent to Tokyo where they, if they survived the disease, would be reassigned. The MASH had been living almost a week on C-rations, and the new Mess Sergeant colonel Potter had rush ordered didn't seem to be in any sort of rush to get there. 

Hawk's psyche had decided it was time for a shut down, until things started to look up. Speaking up which, he was so caught up in hating himself he didn't bother looking up when the long white curtain that lead to the oppressive outdoors shuttered as the door opened and a figure immerged. 

"Shifts up Hawk," the beaming face of Captain Hunnicut walked down the short aisle between the wounded, and patted Captain Pierce on the back. "Came to pick you up."

"No thanks, I'll walk." The scraping of Hawk's feet on the floor as he dragged himself to the door caught BJ's attention. The slump in Hawkeye's shoulders was acting acutely more morose than usual.

"Feeling Blue?" He held open the door for Hawk, but a fatigue fashioned private bustled through the door, nearly bowling Pierce over.

"No," He brushed himself uninterestedly where the private had bumped into him. "Seeing too much Green." 

"Envy?" BJ made show of looking both directions before waving Hawkeye through the door. Running his fingers through his hair in a tired sweep, Hawk sighed.

"Army."

The fresh air didn't do much for him as he stepped out of the med tent and took a quick glance at the sky. He'd been in the tent so long the sudden brightness of the sun stabbed at his eyes and as his sight cleared he stared down the horizon of tangled mesh, corrugated steel and military dilapidation. There was something about that morning that was getting to him.                  

There was something about this morning that got to her. The crispness of it all! Being so many miles from home, but still getting that same homemade feeling whenever she took a lung full of air. The sky was blue enough, and the trees were agreeably faded brown and scraggly, like most brush had in the drier areas. 

Back in the states she had covered every mile she could walk, hitch or motor over, and now it was only when she was moving did she feel like she was really in the right place. Home really can be where the heart is, she thought to herself. 

The thought of her heart, and her home, made her stop her silent reverie for a moment, as a dull pain grew in her head. If she was being entirely honest with herself, it wasn't the feeling of being on the move again that elated her so, but more what she was moving from. Suppressing a shudder, the fresh sting of an ugly memory played out slowly in her mind. She was escaping from the strongest prison she'd ever known. That was a happy thought indeed, and she couldn't help but grin. It was the first sign of life she gave to the other passengers in the Jeep.

            "Happy thoughts, Sergeant?" One of the nurses in the Jeep had caught her smiling to herself.  

            "Not particularly ma'am. Just happy to be on the move, really." She pulled her bag a little bit into herself and shrugged her shoulders, continuing the comatose stature she'd adopted. 

            "Happy to be going to the MASH unit?" The nurse looked surprised. "As a nurse I feel like I have a sense of purpose there, but why you, Sergeant?"

            "Call me Bernie ma'am." She muttered as softly as she could, but just over the wailing motor. "Pretty much everyone does, and I didn't mean to smile. I'm sorry…" The was no standing the way the nurse looked at her, with a strange bewilderment that was almost empathetic like that. It was shameful. Bernie raised her top lip in a grimace and kept talking, hoping an answer would get this woman off her back. "I like to cook ma'am, and it'll be nice to be in charge of my own personal set of staff, I guess. Where it is doesn't really make a difference; whether it's in the on a general's crew or at a MASH unit. I think I'd like them both the same."

            "Wait," another woman turned around, the second nurse of three that were in the jeep. The only other person besides them was a very young looking private who was nervously scanning the sky line for some hidden threat as the jeep he was directing barreled down the road. "You said you cooked for a general? No kidding?"

            "Well, I didn't say that I had, but yeah, no kidding. It's actually where I'm coming from." She pulled the bill of her olive green issue hat low over her eyes with a habitual gesture. She didn't want to talk about the general. Luckily the first woman piped in.

            "We picked you got on at the same med unit as us. Why didn't they just take you straight to the MASH?" Bernie wasn't very excited about how this conversation had suddenly taken a strong focus in her direction.

            "Actually, it was dumb luck that I caught this ride. I'd walked most of the way." It was pretty easy in the military to get a ride anywhere she was headed, what was hard was convincing people that she didn't need one. She was a safe ways from the war, walking shouldn't have been a big deal.

            "You walked!!" The third nurse finally joined the conversation and joined the other two with the surprised look on her face. 

            "Yeah... It was nice." She didn't remember most of it. The fog that she'd been living in, the constant fear, had finally lifted as she walked along. One day she'd woken up on the side of the road, wondering where she was. Bernie knew she wasn't in her right mind. "Really." 

Bernie smiled as radiantly as she could and turned on her charm. These ladies thought she was crazy, and that wouldn't do if they were going to live in the same unit. "So are you three new nurses to the unit we're going to?" They didn't seem to notice her sudden mood swing.

            "We sure are!" The second one chirped. She was a cheerful girl with rosy cheeks and a broad smile. Likable. "Though I think we're all pretty seasoned. They say these sort of things are tough, but I bet it's not all that bad."

            At that moment a shell flew overhead with a wild scream and continued on it's deadly path. The four women followed it with varying looks of horror and intrigue on their faces. They couldn't feel the blast of the impact, but they heard it. The jeep sped up considerably.

            "Well," Bernie's face was painted a wide grinning shade of awe. The other nurses had adopted greener hues that didn't quite match their brownish uniforms. "Now there's something you don't see everyday. Hey kid," the tapped the driver on the shoulder. "How far are we from the front?"

            "A few miles Ma'am, give or take." She thought it was a little bit more on the side of the take, given how white the boy's knuckles were. 

            "Well, looks like we have front row seats to the war!" The cook tried her best to sound as if she had been given the greatest gift on earth, but the moment she said it she knew she should have saved it. Instead of cheering the nurses they switched hues to an arsenic white. Nurse One shot her a deadly glare. Most of the rest of the trip was silent with Bernie's hat pulled low as she focused on the gentle rhythm of jeep jerking down the rocky road. It would have reminded her of a sensation similar to high-impact rolfing, had she had been into that sort of thing. 

            They couldn't get there soon enough.

            "Boredom strikes our fair duo yet again!" Colonel Klinger swung through the door with a peach organdy flourish. Hawkeye looked up from his knitting across the room from where BJ was watching the Still work its slow magic, where he had been for the last half hour. Paint drying and gin dripping seemed to be equally appealing in the state of boredom they were in.

            "I've heard this program before, isn't there anything new on?" Hawk went back to his knitting, and BJ continued to stare never having looked up. 

            "How about a little bit of news to turn your dials?" Klinger sat down conspiratorially on the edge of Hawkeye's bed. 

            "I just had those turned. Every thousand miles or so, otherwise I start getting bald patches." The stronghold of boredom had even started affecting his wit. Things were bad.

            "Cut it out Captain." Klinger wasn't in the mood.

            "I wish I could, but chronic cynicism runs in the family." He made a slight gesture with one hand and then frowned over his work. "Ah, can you believe it? I've dropped a stitch."

            "Listen, Captains, I've got a bit of news that will have you dropping all your stitches." Klinger paused for dramatic effect. It worked. BJ had pulled his eyes away from the slow drip of the still and Hawk laid his knitting in his lap. The corporal grinned widely and leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. "Three new nurses are coming in today!"

            "That's it?!" Hawkeye threw up his small blue blob of stitches. "Klinger, we heard that days ago! Weeks ago!" 

            "Wars ago," BJ chimed in, with his usual amused smile. "Thanks for the gossip Klinger, but it's already been run through this mill. I think we're waiting for more news on that Mess Sergeant that disappeared."

            "Yeah," Klinger sat back in a most un-lady like fashion. "Aren't we all? I've had it up to here with SPAM sandwiches."

"We've been living for four days off of C-rations and what we can dig up." Hawk murmured over his stitches. "I'm actually starting to fantasize about liver with bacon and onions."

            "Now that's cruel and unusual." BJ poured himself some of the Gin he had faithfully watched.

            "Which ones crueler," Klinger whined, around his cigar. "The fact that he's dreaming about it or that his mentioning it makes my mouth water?" Captain Pierce did his best to hide his stomach growling. 

            "So they still haven't found the cook?"  He tried to imagine how the army could lose a Mess Sergeant so easily. He didn't have a hard time coming up with the first hundred ways. 

            "Nope." Klinger shook his head. "Rumor has it that she just walked out of her camp after she got her orders about a week ago and no one's seen her since. Tomorrow's the end of one week since she's disappeared though, so if she doesn't show up they're crying AWOL and sending us a new one."

            "Wait a minute, did you just say 'she'? A female cook?" Hawk sounded excited but the news was enough to grab BJ's attention as well. However, the light in their eyes was anything but hormonal. "Can you see it? A gray haired, little old, pie and cookies, lemonade on the back porch, woman? Do you know what this means?" He didn't wait for an answer and shot out, grabbing Klinger shoulders firmly. "No more liver and Spam. Ma Baker herself will be on our end of the stove!" 

            "I know," the man in drag grinned to see Hawkeye get so caught up in the same idea that he had had. "That's what I was figuring too. And get this. Guess where they're sending her from?"

            "A Betty Crocker Catalogue?" You could tell from his tone that BJ wasn't quite buying the idea of the cookie cutter cuisine that was quickly forming. 

            "Better," Klinger leaned in with a 'here it comes' raise to his brow. "A general's camp."

            BJ gave a low whistle.

            "No kidding? Well, that could be good or bad." The two other men in the tent looked at him with indignant questioning. "Hey! All I'm saying is she might be a great cook cause she was on a general's staff, or she might be a terrible one cause there's got to be a reason she not on his staff anymore. Doesn't it even slightly bother either of you that she just up and walked out of her camp?"

            "He's got a point." Klinger conceded.

            "Soufflé flattener." Muttered Hawkeye as he fell back into his bed. They sat in silence for a moment, letting the boredom blanket them again until the low roar of a Jeep could be heard in the distance.

            "Medic!" A feminine voice cried out as the Jeep came clamoring to a halt. In an instant the jeep with received by two eager looking surgeons. 

            "The new nurses I gather." Bj said, nodding to them and then looking down at their cargo. Three wounded men had somehow been strapped to the oversized Jeep that also carried three nurses as well as the man driving. 

            "Yes, we are." The one nurse that wasn't attending the wounded swung down to help with the unloading. 

            "And look, they brought gifts!" Hawkeye said with a cheerful sarcasm. "They look like they've been roughed up a bit. What happened?" The nurse looked slightly frazzled, as did the other two in the jeep.

            "On the way here a shell flew over head, these guys are the results of the end of the flight pattern." They quickly sorted out the wounded and headed into the OR, nurses in tow. By that time the sight of wounded had called out Colonel Potter as well, and Radar buzzed around trying to sort out who had just arrived as new personnel. Hawk was ready to scrub up, but the more sever looking of the nurses pulled him away from the sink. 

            "I'm afraid there's still two more men out there that we couldn't get into the Jeep," She looked more ashamed than worried as Hawk frowned at her. "And another woman who was on the road with us."  

            His hand was already on a medic bag, and with a quick shout to Sherman, he was out the door and calling for a Jeep. He motioned for the Nurse to follow. "Keeping talking."

            "They're down the road about three or five miles. The two we left weren't badly injured but the Sergeant insisted on staying with them." The nurse looked down-right peeved, as she wrung her hands angrily.  "We couldn't get her on the Jeep. I don't know if we would've had room for her even, but there was no way we could even drag her back to the vehicle." The Jeep had come and Hawkeye jumped in. 

            "Which one?" He asked more forcefully than the nurse would've liked.

            "Which what?" She pulled on the hem of her jacket nervously, unconsciously preening.

            "You said three or five miles. Which is it? How far?" The man was getting out of hand, almost angry. 

            "I…I'm not sure." She straightened her hat slightly. "Four. I'd say about four miles."

            "Let's go!" Captain Pierce yelled to the driver as he settled completely into the jeep, medic helmet a tipped crazily, as an afterthought, on his head.


	2. Betty Crocker She Ain't

As my one and only wonderful reviewer (shout out to the wonderful Addezia, may your camel grow a second hump) pointed out there is no assurity that any woman had anything to do with any thing in Korea, besides nursing. I have no idea if they did. It would be interesting to discover, however. I'm taking myself out on a limb here knowing only what I know about what I know and nothing more, unfortunately. Anyone out there know about women in Korea? That would be an interesting topic to learn about, being a woman myself I find the topic rather titillating. 

But seriously folks, here comes a little more. A chapter summary you say? Why I don't mind if I do…

Bernie's finally on camp. She's getting stronger and slowly encouraging herself to recover from her mysterious past trauma, but Captain Pierce seems to have it out for her. Oh whatever shall she do? 

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" She had been there for almost two thirds of an hour, talking to these boys and making sure they didn't drift off to a place she couldn't bring them back from. She knew enough about serious injuries to know that while what they had sustained wasn't the worst they could have gotten, it was best to keep them awake, motionless, and bleeding as little as possible.

            "I don't figure on letting you." She smiled, curled up at their heads with her knees on her chin. She was the picture of calm, but anxiety was threatening to creep out of her every pore. Her eyes shot to the road for the tenth time that minute. "You both feeling comfortable? Anything I can get you?"

            "Water?" The younger one of the two asked shyly. Neither of them were much on complaining, but she could tell, they were hurting.

            "Sure thing. How do you like that, straight up or with a twist?" She twirled the cap to her canteen and raised it to the young boys lips. 

            "Thanks." He grinned meekly at her when he had finished. "You're sure you're not a nurse?"

            "No, but I once met someone who was related to Florence Nightingale, so I figure I'm just as good as qualified." She took a swig of water for herself and them offered it to the other wounded man who shook his head. Her voice was stronger now, it shook less with every word like it had with the nurses in the jeep. These boys needed her to be strong, and she'd pull it off as best as she could.

            "Really?" the younger one of the two perked up, he passed the fag they had lit to her and she took a deep pull. "Is that when you were volunteering in the free hospital down south?" Bernie blushed.

            "Actually," Her eyes darted to the side, evading his with a little embarrassment. "Bartending in the east, but I think you two know too much about me as it is." 

When the nurses and herself, found the bodies laying with shrapnel imbedded in them, screaming and moaning next to two smoldering jeeps her adrenaline had kicked in. All anxiousness she felt immediately fled her mind and she had raced around talking a mile a minute and throwing in a hand to dress a wound whenever she could. She couldn't say why now, but she'd instinctively known to stay behind with these wounded boys on the side of the road when the jeep was loaded. 

No amount of persuading had changed her mind. It had been a nervous reaction at the time, letting them leave her like this. No hint of heroism to it. They had waved her off with a medicine bag and a false grin pasted on her face. Now that the buzz in her head was finally clearing she wasn't quite as comfortable with the situation as she'd thought she would be. In a knee jerk reaction she'd hid her fear with incessant talk about herself, and a few things that, in normal circumstances, she never would've dreamed of mentioning to polite company. It was time for a subject change.

"How about you two? Got a sweetheart pining back home for either of you?" She turned to the older boy, who looked like he was doing the worst of the two, and handed him the dying butt of the cigarette. "I bet you've got to just beat them away when you're in the states."

            "Yes Ma'am." He grinned, winking at her, and taking the last draw of smoke. But then he groaned rolling his eyes back into his head.

            "Aw, shit." She muttered, leaning over him, hesitating for a moment, and then pushing down on his shoulders to immobilize him as best she could. "Hang in there!"

            What a stupid phrase, Bernie thought to herself. Hang in there.

            "The names Marcus." He moaned, but the pain seemed to be subsiding. "Please, call me Mark. I must have forgotten my manners. Pretty faces seem to do that to me."

            "Bleeding through my stomach would do that to me," she muttered, something about war always brought out the wolf in a man. She used the excuse to check his bandages to cover the way her hands had begun to shake. Bernie turned to the other boy. "How about you. It's Adam, right?"

            "Yes Ma'am," he stared off into the distance, and she followed his eyes up into space when a heavenly sound came to her ears.

            "A jeep!" She checked the two of them quickly and then ran to the side of the road, waving her hands and yelling. A rush of relief washed over her when she saw the white circle and red cross of a medic. These boys had a good chance of making it through this. So did she.

            The Jeep slowed to a stop and she hardly had time to acknowledge the man who unfolded himself from the passenger seat before she took off running and waving for him to follow.

            "Over here! They're over here!" They weren't far from the road, but she was panting when she fell to her knees by they're sides. "Mark, Adam, I brought a friend."

            "You two are lucky I don't charge extra for house calls." The medic said with a grin as he stepped beside them, quickly assessing the situation and kneeling to check their wounds. "Who bound them?" He was asking her, but she was too busy fretting over the two wounded to look at him.

            "I did." She paused, guiltily. "Well, the nurses had but they soaked through, I re-wrapped them with what I had. I didn't let anything dirty touch them, I swear!"

            "No, you did good." He went to work on Marcus first, quickly removing the bandages. "Where do you hurt kid? Anything I can't see?"

            "No, just what I've got right here I think." He grabbed for Bernie's hand when a fresh wave of pain hit him. The touch came as a shock to her and she jumped with a small yelp. The Medic looked up at her with a strange knot over his eyes and turned to yell at the private who was still in the Jeep.

            "Get those stretchers over here, now!" Hesitantly, the kid obeyed, but obviously not happy to be stepping on pre-bombed soil. "We're going to have to get this one in as soon as possible." He muttered to himself, and then looked up at Bernie. 

For the first time she met the man's eyes, and she felt wash of calm like strong breese. They were a light shade of blue that were sharp and seemed to miss nothing. All she could do was nod. He quickly turned his attention to the other boy, Adam. "Well, you're lucky kid. Looks like you've got some scratches and a few broken bones, but you're a lot better off than the other guys I just saw." Bernie sighed more audibly than she meant to. The kid was young, and it was tough to see him beat up like he was, but it was good to hear there was nothing serious.

            She aided in getting the two patients onto the stretchers and in ten minutes they were in camp with the two boys being raced off to the OR. The medic stayed.

            "Sorry I didn't introduce myself." He took of his ridiculous looking helmet and reached out a long wiry hand. "Captain Benjamin Pierce, surgeon in this little cesspool we call home. Consider me the welcoming committee of MASH 4077." So, she had arrived at last. A whole day early too!

She took his hand and tried not to flinch at his touch. It wasn't him that made her flinch. She just possessed her own reasons. He didn't seem to notice if she had. 

            "Bernadette Owens. Sergeant. I would've brought gifts for the welcoming committee but all I could find were a couple of wounded soldiers," she shrugged, she wasn't in a joking mood, but they always seemed to come out anyway, "and I hear they just don't go with anything." Her face was sober, and keeping the conversation brief, she panned the khaki horizon for a second and located her gear. "Thanks for coming to get me out there." She muttered and started to walk to her bag. Pierce followed, matching her casual gait.

            "I haven't seen you around here before. Just passing through?" Something in the casual way he talked made the conversation seem more prodding than Bernie felt was necessary.

            "No, I'm staying." She hitched her bag onto her shoulder and unconsciously pulled on her hat that was already low on her eyes. She had to get to work, once she was working, everything would be alright.

            "Really?" The captain seemed surprised. 

            "Yes sir." She turned her head away a little in a way she hoped would end the conversation, walking into the door she guessed would lead to the CO's office. A small man who pulled a white surgical cap off of his head, the last remnants of a recent surgery, came through another set of swinging doors just as she did. Pierce wasn't far behind her.

            "Well, looked what the cat dragged in!" The marking on his clothing clearly identified him as a colonel, and she assumed, the CO. 

            "Sir," she said as respectfully as she could, with a small salute that was just as slightly returned. "Sergeant Bernadette Owens reporting, Sir."

            "We picked her up with the two wounded that just came in, Colonel. She made the nurses she was coming in with leave her behind."  Pierce stepped around Bernie and fell in a chair next to the desk in front of her. "I was told she was practically dragged to the Jeep and she still wouldn't go." The Colonel raised a brow and turned to her. 

            "I'm sorry sir, they loaded the worst cases first and I felt that it would be better if they went with the ones they left, since the nurses could do more good than I could. The boys I stayed with weren't that bad off, and they did almost drag me to the Jeep, but that's not worth the story, Sir." She was startled as the door behind her swung open and a slight figure came bustling in. 

            "Colonel Potter, Sir. I think the new mess sergeant is going to be here soon, sir." She looked at the man who had just come in curiously. He was terribly young, but his face was sincere, and calm. 

            "Horse feathers! Radar she's right…" The colonel looked a little ticked to be interrupted, but he didn't raise his voice. Hawkeye jumped in before he could finish the sentence.

             "We'll know when she comes Radar." He patted the corporal, "she'll be the picture of all things plump and delicious, a veritable vision of delectable delights." Captain pierce leaned back in his chair, smacking his lips together and rubbing his hands. 

            Radar suddenly looked up at Bernie, and she caught his knowing glance. She nodded slightly at his questioning gaze. Somehow the kid knew who she was. Bernie should have been creeped-out, but she was too busy being nervous.

            "Pierce, I repeat," the Colonel pulled his hands behind his back and grinned widely at the Captain. "It's not even certain that she's going to show up at all. Disappearing like that is bad news. She may be dead for all we know." He looked to Sergeant Owens and asked, "How 'bout it Sergeant, are you dead?"

            "Oh, I'm not dead, Sir," Bernie chimed in stupidly. She regretted it instantly. The look Captain Pierce gave her was impossible to read, thought she knew it wasn't a good look, but Radar just smiled and the Colonel looked very pleased with himself. He'd been expecting her, he'd known who she was the moment she said her name.

            "Well, that's good to hear. Radar, show Sergeant Owens here to her tent and then walk her around the Mess." He turned to Bernie and pointed to the his clerk. "Everything you need you can get from him, including acquisition forms that have to go through me. Clear?"

            "As a bell sir." She stiffened slightly as she felt her new job come into immediate action. Radar walked up to her and around to push open the door.

            "If you'll just come this way Ma'am." She hitched up her bag and tugged on her hat's brim.

            "Call me Bernie, please, Corporal." She was working on building up her voice from its low unassuming tone, but she didn't succeed.  "It was nice meeting you Captain."

            Hawkeye watched the door close and stopped to let a few things sink in.

            "That was no vision. That was a Hurricane." His heart fell into his stomach, which was currently kicking up a mutiny. All hopes for a decent meal were now squashed. Sergeant Bernie was a short woman who wore a baggy, dusty jacket, worn shoes and pants so wrinkled and faded she looked as if she had slept in them for the good part of a year. She had some shade of brown hair that he saw peaking out from up her cap where it was tucked firmly away, but he also had yet to see her eyes, which were shaded so deeply by her hat that there was nothing above the tip of her nose except shadow. The worst thing was how she reacted to the situation she was in. Except for the occasional humorous but stagnant joke that came out of her, he'd seen post traumatic stress victims who looked less edgy than her.

Betty Crocker she wasn't.

            "She's a cook," Potter patted a clearly deflated Hawkeye on the shoulder. "That's all we ordered, Son, and that's what we got." Hawk got out of the chair, defeated.

            "Send a case of Spam to my tent, something tells me I'm going to be begging for it after a little while." He pushed out the door tiredly, and headed to his tent, just in time to see a green flash of the Sergeant as she headed into the kitchen. His moral dropped below measurable levels.

            "Hey, out scouting the new nurses?" BJ was already in the tent when he got back, lying in his bed, reading.

            "Naw," He shuffled over to his bed. "I went out to get the other two wounded boys and wound up with a cook." 

            "Sounds like a fair trade." His friend was interested, setting down the book and sitting up. "This wouldn't happen to be the cook we've been waiting all week for?"

            "The one and only." Hawk muttered as he fell into bed. It wasn't that he was as exhausted as it seemed, but utter deflation took a lot out of a guy. BJ seemed to pick up on his mood and was puzzled.

            "Well that's great!"

            "Not unless you saw her." Hawk interjected. "The woman is a walking disaster area! Talking to her includes convincing yourself that she's actually there."

            "Shy, huh?" 

"She's so quite  I had to cover my ears to deafen the silence. Personally, she's little impersonal. I got jumpy just being next to her." BJ waved an arm at his hyperbole.

"Who cares as long as she can cook!"

            "You don't know that she can." Hawk snapped. His poor mood had made Hawkeye particularly sarcastic.  

            "You don't know that she can't!" BJ countered, and fell back into bed, closing his   eyes and actively waiting for dinner.

            "Trust me Beej," Hawk mumbled into his pillow, and sliced his hand through the air, as if cutting off the conversation. "If you'd seen this girl you'd know. She can't." And with that he drifted off, away from the hell that had just found a few more degrees of heat.    

            "So that's the door to the kitchen, and right there's the Mess Tent." Radar lead her around with small, quick steps. "And this is your tent!" He pushed open the door to a ragged looking canvas sack that may have passed for a tent. 

            "Home sweet home," She said with the smallest of smiles to Radar as she walked through the door, and flipped on the lights.

            "It's not much really, but we do what we can." The floor was dirt, and one smartly made cot, one short three-legged table and a set of drawers stood at a rundown attention. 

            "It's perfect." She grinned more widely than she had in days and threw her bag down on the floor, sitting on her bed, bouncing slightly to test how well the cot bounced back. There was some slight give. "It isn't the four seasons, but I like it." The corporal smiled at her a little and she took it as a good sign. "Anything else?"

            "I should be asking you that, Ma'am." He looked down at his notes quickly, and she took the moment to take off her hat and finally let her hair down from its place, tucked up in her hat, where she kept it when she was traveling. "Do you uh…" Radar had looked up from his clipboard just in time to see her shake out her hair. The look in his eyes told her just how ridiculous she must have looked. Like a regular shampoo commercial.

            "Yes, corporal?" She was back to low muttering, suddenly feeling exposed.

            "Well, Ma'am, I was just going to let you know we normally have dinner in about three hours, but the kitchens in a real state."

            "It's a mess of a mess is it?" She rolled her eyes and stood. The corporal was small and helpless looking enough, but she didn't like the idea of him being in the tent alone with her. The corporal laughed a little at her attempt at a joke and followed her out the door.

            "I'm sorry Ma'am."

            "Call me Bernie," She made her way quickly across the compound and to the Kitchen door. "It's what everyone calls me. Now, lets take a look at this disaster areahh…" her voice faded out as she opened the door and caught her first glimpse of the inside. Empty C-ration cans, empty Spam cans and other unidentifiables filled the floor. Every cabinet was open and objects very caught in one level of cascade or another, from the counter to the floor. Large smatterings of white were evidence that someone had tried to do something with the flour. She had no idea what. "I guess nightmares really can come true." She grinned at her herself and reveled in the mess at her feet. 

            Radar was about to apologize again; a nice girl like her didn't deserve all this, when Bernie did something entirely unexpected. She tipped her head back and let a peal of laughter fly.

            This was exactly as she'd expected it to be. Everything was too perfect. The thoughts of the emotional terror she had survived through the past months could easily be ignored with some good heavy work like what waited for her right in this Kitchen. Her bunk was hers, and only hers, no one to invade on the privacy she cherished. To top it off, Radar had informed her that she would be alone, the only mess officer, until they could find some people to work under her. She promptly told him not to worry, and take his time. She could handle this job. He looked at her like she was crazy. Maybe she was.

            She didn't care.

            "Radar, who do I need to tell when food's ready?" Without bothering to look at the corporal she stepped into the mess and located a trash can as she talked.

            "Uh, me ma'am. I make an announcement over the PA." He watched her clean for a moment and             then quickly remembered to offer his help. Before she could refuse, the sound of choppers came whining over the horizon.

            She surveyed the cleaned floor happily, and then the large sets of metal platters piled high with freshly made foodstuffs. Every muscle in her body ached with the delicious pain of hard work and the sweat that ran down her body was hardly noticed until she reached for her hat in her back pocket and felt the wetness of her own forehead as she tucked her hair into her hat and pulled the brim down. Standing unsteadily, with her muscles screaming, she hefted one platter at a time to where it would be served. She'd washed all the trays she could find, and wiped down the benches. Silverware was out, coffee was made, and everything had seemed to be finally coming to order. 

            She caught the attention of an enlisted man walking around and asked him to tell Corporal Radar that dinner was served in twenty minutes.

            "Time for a quick shower," Bernie had a habit of talking to herself when she was alone. She walked into the kitchen and picked up her jacket that had long since been discarded in the heat of the kitchen and started to untie her apron. Her thick white tank top was still stained with food and long yellow marks under her armpits. It was a good feeling though; the hard work and grime made her feel sort of glowing. She grinned at her silly feelings and looked up at the sound of the mess tent door opening. Two men still in surgeon's scrubs walked in, and she suddenly felt venerable in nothing but her long baggy pants, tank and apron. She pulled on the brim of her hat nervously. 

            "I don't know Hawk, it smells fine." The one on the left said. She immediately recognized the next voice. 

            "Oh sure, it's like carbon monoxide gas, you don't smell a thing and then WHAM…oh." He caught the sight of a familiar hat brim and quickly silenced himself. 

            "I…I told Radar it would be twenty minutes." She didn't know why her voice barely came out in a whisper, but she knew they'd been talking about her cooking. Normally she would have come back at the critical surgeon with something just as sharp, but they'd caught her off guard, and she hadn't been much with her quick wit lately. "I didn't even hear the announcement."

            "News travels fast." Hawkeye offered and grabbed a tray. 

            It looked like they were expecting to be served, and she wouldn't be getting her shower. More men poured in after them, and the stream was pretty constant. 

            "It's not bad Hawk," BJ looked at it curiously and then popped a bite in his mouth. "You haven't touched a bit."

            "Do you think I want to?" He poked at the meat wrapped in thick dough. "Did you see her? It was disgusting!"

            "She's been in front of a hot stove, hot oven and not to mention we're not exactly experiencing Siberian temperatures. " BJ turned to look at the girl who was serving up the men, grinning with each one. He could barely see her face under the bill of her hat, but a smile was clearly growing. "It looks like she's trying real hard."

            "A shower BJ! She could have…"

            "You gonna eat that?" BJ interrupted, in half of an attempt to get Pierce to shut up, and pointed at Hawks plate. Hawk's jaw dropped.

            "What?" 

            "It really is good," he shrugged. "And if you're not going to eat it, I will."

            "No kidding?" Hawk looked down at his tray as if it were about to eat him instead of the other way around. He stabbed a bit and sniffed. Tentatively, he put the bit into his mouth and winced expectantly. In a moment his face softened into a wide-eyed expression. "Hey. This isn't half bad…" He took another forkful.

            "It's amazing," BJ quipped, "I've never seen a grow man eat his own words so quickly."

            Between bites Hawkeye managed a sarcastic grimace and chewed dramatically.

            Clean up wasn't as bad as she'd been expecting. At the general's she, or someone on her team, would have laid out a plate of deserts right about now, but there was no way of coming up with anything half decent in the amount of time she'd had, so she'd have to wait until tomorrow to start that tradition here. She made a fresh batch of coffee and left out the clean mugs. That would have to do. 

            A quick mental inventory told her she had everything she needed for the breakfast she had planned tomorrow and she set out to fall into bed. The moment she was out the door her breath caught her. 

It was already dark out.

For some reason she hadn't realized this simple fact, and she was terrified. Out on the road she felt safe since she'd made camp and was fast asleep well before the sun went down. But this camp was strange, and yet all too familiar when she couldn't see a thing.

It had always started like this; in the dark. She was paralyzed as she heard the sound of someone coming around the corner and a dark figure loomed in her sight. She to be as still as possible, but a rock suddenly settled with a faint crunching noise under her foot. 

            "Halt! Who goes there!" A male voice belted, and she cried out. "Who ho ho there Miss, settle down!" A large hand grabbed her arm and she tore away. 

            She wanted to scream, to tell him to leave her alone, to not touch her. But once she pushed his hand away once, he didn't touch her again.

Corporal Klinger watched the woman cower in front of him. He was about to ask her what she thought she was doing outside the kitchen when it hit him.

            "Hey, you're the new Mess Sergeant aren't you? It's me, the guy in the dress." The woman seemed to settle down after hearing him talk. 

            "Corporal?" She stood up and strained to see him in the dark. Sure enough there was the tall hairy man, one of the many she had served that day, but his blue chiffon made him a little more memorable than the others. "God, you scared me!" She could finally breath again, and took several deep breaths. 

            "So I can see. Are you alright? I'm sorry if I snuck up on you there." His voice sounded genuine and she tugged on her hat, feeling his worried gaze on her.

            "No, not at all, I guess I've just got a little thing about staying out in the dark in war time." She smiled at him as widely as she could and then a thought hit her. "Corporal. I seem to have forgotten where to find my tent, and could use an escort." 

            "Ready and willing, Ma'am, just follow me." He saluted her with zeal and she laughed lightly. He offered her his arm and she took it. Somehow this man in a dress didn't threaten her at all. She broke her limited physical contact rule for the first time in a long time.


	3. Lot's of Guys Do It

In response to "pissed off poet": I'm not quite sure when you're talking about, I'd like to know where you thought there was a matter of clarity that needed to be clarified so I can work on clearing that up in the future ^_^

In this Chapter: Bernie gets a request to visit someone from her very near past, we learn a bit more about her background, and Hawkeye gets surprise from out of left field when he gets a good look at her for the first time. (Bet you can't guess what he sees… okay, I'm actually pretty sure you can guess, I'm sure you've been waiting for it like a tornado you spotted three miles off, but let's keep it a secret, okay wise guy?) 

Hawk sat in the swamp, deep in thought when Radar came in a short-statured flurry. 

            "Hey guys, do you think I could talk to you for a second?" BJ was just about to invite Radar to stay for a while when a female voice carried through to their tent as a couple walked by. It was Mess Sergeant Owens, being lead by a hairy, pearl ornamented, arm. Radar followed them closely with his eyes, and both BJ and Hawkeye noticed it.

            "She has a nice laugh, don't you think, Radar?" BJ said when they couldn't hear her any longer. 

            "She's pretty too," Radar said lightly but then realized what he'd said and turned to BJ with a guilty blush. "I mean, she's nice, I guess."

            "It's okay to think a girl's pretty, Radar." He took a sip from his Martini glass and sat down in the wooden lawn chair. "A lot of guys do it."

            "Wait a second." Hawk jumped into the conversation. "Is this the new mess sergeant we're talking about? Sargent Owens?!" 

            "Bernie." Radar offered quickly as he wrung his hat in his hands. 

            "Oh! Bernie!" Hawk threw his hands up in the air. "Ha! I'm sorry Radar, but you can do better, Kid." He fell back into his bed and gave Radar a stern but fatherly look.

            "Gee, I dunno Hawk, I mean, she's real pretty." 

BJ raised a curious brow at this statement.

            "How can you tell?" He asked, noticeably less adamant about the whole subject than Hawkeye. "She's always wearing her hat down low, you can barely see half her face."

            "Oh no sir, she took it off, and shook out her hair and everything when we were in her tent today." Radar remembered the moment vividly. "She's got this long dark brown hair and gosh…" He was blushing furiously. 

            "She's a regular Rita Hayworth." BJ grinned at Hawk who was just about to make a stunningly cutting remark.

            "Pierce!" Charles came bowling through the door. "Your post-op shift started ten minutes ago!"

            "Hold the war! I'm coming." He responded with an over dramatic flourish and was out the door.

            "Hey Doc, do me a favor will yah?" Hawk had been through his rounds and was just sitting and waiting for something to go wrong when the kid called for him. He got up and crossed the room.

            "Remember me Doc?" The widely grinning face asked. He did. 

            "Yeah, you're the kid I went out to get earlier, your lucky I take my work home with me. " He grabbed his chart and looked it over. The kid was healing slowly, but steadily. "Private Marcus Calvin?"

            "That's me," his grin seemed to be a permanent facet on his façade. "Hey, I was wondering if you'd do me a favor doc."

            "It depends, what is it." Hawk took a seat next to his bed, briefly checking his IV.

            "You remember that girl who was with me and that other guy when you came to get us. She's stationed here, right?" He didn't wait for Pierce to confirm. "Could you maybe go get her for me. I have a need to stare longingly into a set of deep green eyes."

            "How would you know what color her eyes are? Her hat covers them." He suddenly remembered that the angle the boy had been laying would have allowed him to see right under her hat, un-shadowed. "It's pretty late. Besides, she seems like a bit of the quite type for you." Hawk grinned back at the kid seeing a familiar prowling gleam in the eyes that were begging him.

            "Quite type? Where'd you get that?" The kid had a habit of asking questions without waiting for an answer. "Don't wake her if she's sleeping or anything, but it sure would be nice to see her again. She's got some interesting stories about herself, you wouldn't believe!"

            "Oh really?" Hawk stood up and went to the edge of the bed to hang the chart back up, and winked. "Sure, I'll go get her."

            He checked with the nurse on duty, and said he would be ducking out for a moment.

            A bucket of water at her feet, filled with the soapy remnants of her cleaning, was still slightly warm as she toweled and brushed her drying hair. She was naked, but cleaner than she'd felt for weeks. She dug through her bag for a pair of white cotton underwear and a plain bra. She had barely put them on when her hand brushed over her stomach and a faint echo of pain appeared. She looked down at the large bruise that started with a midnight blue on the center of her stomach and faded to a mauve-like purple to a tar yellow. Several smaller bruises up and down her legs mimicked the larger one, each one in various stages of color and healing. She rushed putting the rest of her clothes on to shield herself from looking at the marks. 

            She pulled a fresh white tank top from her bag and slipped it on. Then a pair of baggy pants, men's issue, she'd won in a game of poker. "Sergeant Cutter," a neatly inked print on the inside tag said, and she smiled at the memory of the lead member of her old team. He was the one that had lobbied for her transfer, and the only one who knew the whole story behind the bruises on her body besides the parties directly involved. Remembering his face she thought back on this past day at the new camp and how she'd been so incredibly timid. 

She straightened herself slightly and made herself recall every one of Cutter's reassuring words. He'd said she was bright, and a great friend to have. She was strong, and he knew it. He'd hoped she'd be strong were ever she went, and for him she would try. And she knew she had to try a bit harder than she had been. From this moment on Bernie, she thought to herself, you are no longer allowed to hide from yourself. She snapped another button on her pants and grinned wildly. The freedom of her new life was doing good things for her.

Just as she was buttoning the last button on her pants there was a knock at the door. She went to open it.

            "Good evening Captain Pierce." Bernie smiled cheerfully up at the wiry figure in the doorway. He didn't move, he didn't say a word for a good thirty seconds and then when he did, his voice was softer than she'd heard it yet.

            "I'm sorry I was looking for, Mess Sergeant Owens." Long shoulder length, thick, shiny, gorgeous brown hair that curled lightly at the bottom and waved slightly framed a round face with a wide red-lipped radiant smile and a set of sparkling, deep green eyes. This couldn't be the mess of a mess sergeant he had so strongly criticized before.

            "You're looking at her." Boy was he ever! Her voice was a little quieter now as well, and Hawkeye realized her was making her uncomfortable with his staring. "Um… Call me Bernie, everyone does." 

            "Well, you've been requested to appear in post-op, Bernie." Hawk started to remember himself, but he couldn't seem to get the surprise out of his features. "And I think I'm beginning to see why." Bernie gave him a perplexed look.

            "Requested? I'm afraid I don't understand." She went up to pull on the brim of her hat, only to realize too late that it wasn't there. Her hand smoothed the top her hair awkwardly instead. 

            "A kid named Marcus wanted…" Bernie interrupted with a widening of her smile.

            "Marcus! Of course! Where is he?" The boy actually wanted her around after the way she'd acted? The thought made her stomach jump. 

            "Well, I was going to make you come on doctors orders, but you seem willing enough." Hawk stepped back holding the door open for her.

            "How's he doing?" She grabbed her hat that was at the table that she'd situated next to the door and shoved it deep into her pocket, and went through the door Captain Pierce was holding open. 

            "A little slow, but everyone's got their own pace. He's barely woken up, but he asked to see you. You know him?" the excitement on her face caught him off guard. Maybe there was something between these two. 

            "No, I only met him today." She was two steps ahead of him, but he kept up with her pace.

            "You seem a little happier to hear from him than someone who's just met him." She stopped dead in her tracks.

            "Do I?" She pulled out her hat and tugged it down low, thinking. She knew why she seemed happy, she was forcing it just a little, but a little more of it was genuine. The time had come to start learning to enjoy the company of others, and it would start with this wounded soldier. 

            That damn hat! Hawkeye thought.

            "I guess I'm just glad to hear he's okay!" Not to mention there's nothing threatening about a bed-ridden man, she added in her thoughts.

            They continued to walk until they got to the post-op door, and the second she was around the curtain she heard her name.

            "Bernie! I thought the Doc had taken you for himself!" Marcus craned his head up as high as he could. Sergeant Owens ran over and made him lay back.

            "Hey there." She settled on the short stool next to his bed. "You're looking good."

            "I could say the same to you." He winked. "Say, won't you take off that silly looking hat?" he said reaching up for it playfully but she pulled away.

            "Standard issue's all the rage!" She tried to cover her startled reaction to his grabbing for her as a something playful. "It's not very G.I. calling it silly looking." Marcus frowned slightly.

            "Well, it's silly looking on you. Come on, do it for a wounded man." As he said it she gently pulled it of and ran her hands though her hair.

            Hawk suddenly knew what Radar meant, watching her next to Marcus. She sure was darn pretty.

            "There," she stuffed the hat in back pocket and put her elbow on her knee and rested her head on her fist. "I don't do that for just anyone." She winked back at him.

            "Hey Sarg., you think you and I could have a little dinner together and then you can teach me what that Costa Rican taught you in the …" Marcus was about to divulge something very important, at least it was the way it looked by how wide Bernie's eyes got and how quickly she interrupted him.

            "You remember what I told you!" She almost cried out, but remembered where she was at the last moment and hissed angrily instead.

            "Something like that?" Marcus grinned wickedly, "A man isn't likely to forget easily." Bernie turned to Hawkeye.

            "Remind me never to tell my life's story to a wounded soldier, even if I think he's dying!" 

            "I can't make any promises," Hawk smiled at her. "Did she really tell you her life's story?"

            "I dunno," Marcus shrugged. "We were only talking for about half an hour. I've got a feeling you've got a lot more than a half an hours worth of stories in yah, Bernie."

            "None I'm telling you blabber mouth." She had talked to them endlessly in an attempt to keep them awake. It was ironic that she was calling him a blabber mouth compared to how much she had rattled off to them in the terror of the moment. 

            "Aw, come on! I was teasing!" 

            There was something about how easily the kid flirted with her that made her feel a little better. It had been a long time since a man had joked with her like this. Back at the old camp most men wouldn't even talk to her, and the one that did…

            "Hey! Bernie! Why the long face? I didn't mean anything by it. I said I was teasing." An upset voice interrupted her thoughts.

            "Oh…I was just thinking. Bad memories I guess, but nothing to do with you, I guarantee it!" She patted the soldier lightly on his arm. "How are you feeling?"

            "Just fine, now that you're here." 

            "A regular Romeo in Wolfs clothing, huh?" She chuckled, it was time for her to head out. She could feel the anxiousness she thought she'd quelled back in the tent rise up from the pit of her stomach again. "Well, can't have you getting too much better. It's late and we both need our sleep." She got up to go and he grabbed her hand more tightly than he maybe needed to. The touch made her stiffen, and the strength of his hand pulling on her didn't hurt her, but she still felt like crying out.

            "Will you come back tomorrow?" The question was innocent enough, but Hawk saw something in the sad way she nodded quickly and walked out of post-op. Something enough to follow her.

            "Hey, you alright? What was that all about?" Hawk jogged and caught up with her, walking quickly at her side. When she didn't answer they walked in silence for a bit.

            "Listen, Captain Pierce…" Stopping suddenly she turned to him.

            "Hawkeye."

            "Listen, Captain." Their eyes didn't meet but she brushed at her hair with agitation. "I know you don't really think much of me, I can tell. But you don't have to try and cover it with false sympathy. Please, let me be." Something about the calm anger she used in her tone made the sting of what she said just that much worse.

            "Ah, I didn't…"

            "I heard you, the things you said. I saw how you looked at me, and I'm sorry if I'm not what you where expecting…"

            "No, I'm sorry. I judged you before I knew…"

            "Before you saw me cleaned up. I know." She had heard everything, through the swinging doors of the Coronals office, the mesh walls of his tent, and the snide comment in the Mess. Until that moment she hadn't spared him a thought, she was mature enough to know that not everyone everywhere would be her best friend and she'd brushed his comments aside, but she couldn't take the crap that he was giving her now. The kid in the post-op had really spooked her.

            "Listen about that, I was wrong, I really was." He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. "That's what a week of canned Spam and a war will do to you. I'm not normally a…"

            "Pig-headed asshole? I hope not." She spit out the words without thinking. There was a long silence in which Bernie kicked herself several times, in a silent motionless way that she only saw in her head, but there was still a grimace on her face as she felt the blows.

            "I was going for something along the lines of out-of-line, but I guess your entitled." Reading his face she could tell she'd made him mad.

            "Have you ever said something that you didn't mean and the second you say it you realize it, that you don't mean it, I mean, and then you wish more than anything that you hadn't said it." Her mouth ran of with her mind, and she was sure she'd lost it. 

"Is that your way of apologizing, or do you confuse people just before you really strike?" Hawkeye was just under yelling, but not above resorting to it. Things where really getting tense.

"It's my way of apologizing." She sighed and shook her head. "It's been a rough week for the both of us Captain, and if you don't mind I'd like to get some sleep." It wasn't the week that had been rough; it had been being back on a base. She had thought changing her surrounding would make her forget what had happened back at the general's but there are some things that are just carried with you. Life was slowly going down the drain, and she didn't need a spiteful acquaintance clogging it all up. But Hawkeye made a move that surprised her, and after he cleared his throat when she turned around to head back to her bunk, he voice was much different. Friendlier.

            "How about a drink of friendship? On me." Hawkeye offered the peace pipe. "I've just lost all of my money in a not so friendly game of poker, but I know where…"

            "Done." Screw finding happiness and sunshine in her life again, she was having too hard a time of it. What she needed was a drink, and if it buried a hatchet as well then two birds with one stone and all those clichés. 

            "Right this way then Ma'am." His offered his arm, but she pretended not to see it. Somehow she would need to figure out a way to deal with having a man touch her again, but now wasn't the time. She started walking in the direction he'd pointed to. 

            "Did I hear you say something about losing all your money a poker game?" After a few silent moments Bernie attempted conversation.

            "One every week. You play?" 

            "Terribly," she lied. "But I like to lose money."

            "Well then you'll fit right in!"  They walked side-by-side back in the direction of the post-op. "Personally, I only gamble when a war's on. That way if I make a killing, no one will notice."

            The joke was terrible, and that was probably the reason she giggled.

            "Her we are at our fungus culture away from home, not so jokingly referred to as the Swamp." The door swung open revealing on of the messiest interiors she'd seen in a long time. It even beat the Kitchen from that morning.

            "I like your decorating," she quipped as she stepped inside. "Post-modern junk heap?"

            "We prefer late era fall-out, but to each his own. Ah, may I introduce to you Captain BJ Hunnicut, the fastest scalpel this side of the Pacific." A blonde man with a warm smile stood as she entered. 

            "And who might I be honored in making the acquaintance of?" He said as he stuck out a hand. She took it, beginning her male desensitization program.

            " Mess Sergeant Owens. I'm new around these parts and Captain Pierce here has decided to… is that what I think it is?" The large glass contraption on her right quickly caught her attention. She went straight to it in wonder, not noticing BJ's wide-eyed stare.

            "Sergeant Owens?!" He looked at Hawkeye who nodded to confirm his surprise. 

            "She cleans up nice doesn't she?" Stepping over to the still he coaxed two glasses worth of gin out of the tubing. "She's got good ears too. Heard everything I said about her. Lucky she's decided to bury the hatchet with a drink instead of in me."

            "Why opt for violence when there's good gin to be had?" She took the drink and toasted it in the air. The other two raised there glasses.

            "You obviously haven't tried this." BJ smiled as he watched her take a large belt.

            It burned. Madly. But she didn't choke or balk in the least. Instead she did something completely unexpected. She laughed.

            Madly.

            "My lord! This is wonderful!" Memories of her travels flooded back to her. "Beautiful booze!"

            "We tend to think so," Hawk said staring at her. "Did I give her the right glass?" she giggled at his confused expression. They'd seen the rare, timid Bernie species as a first impression, but a stronger Bernie was fighting her way out, and she was ready to surprise them.

            "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I was a bartender for awhile back in the states. In the south none the less." She took another sip and this time winced a little at the pureness of the alcohol. "The other bar guy and I built one of our own for fun. We tried anything once, or twice, sometimes three times but that was only because by that time we couldn't remember the first two."

            "Strange," Hawk sat down on the bed behind her, and BJ settled onto his. She found a wooden carton to sit on. "You don't sound like a southern bell."

            "Oh I'm not. I'm actually from Minnesota, small town girl. As a kid I decided I wanted to live in every single state of the union." She waved her hand widely as if to brush over each state in the air.

            "How many so far?"

            "Thirty three and Korea, with a short stint in Mexico I don't care to remember."

            "Hey, that's quite a track record there." Hawk took a sip of his drink and raised his eyebrows at her over his glass.

            "Yeah, well," she played with the rim of her glass, "it makes for good stories at dinner parties, and when you're trying to keep wounded soldiers conscious." She shrugged. 

            "Well, you just missed our last dinner party." BJ smiled at her, and she couldn't help blushing. 

            "It was a wonderful event" Hawkeye fluttered his eyes with false pomp. "Even the cockroaches were black tie."

            And for just under two hours they drank gin and swapped stories, well, they had started out as stories and turned into jokes and laughter. When Bernie finally stepped out of the tent, and wobbled towards her own, Hawkeye followed her. 

            "G'night Mon Capitan!" She slurred with a sloppy salute. "It was nice of you guys to have me over."

            "Pleasure was all ours. We like to relax after dueling with words around here." Hawk grinned. "Listen, I just want to say one more time I'm sorry. I misjudged you." He leaned on her doorway and pointed at her. "I mean, who would've known you could cook?"

            "Oh thanks!" She laughed and stumbled a bit getting her door open. "Who would've known an ass like you could make such a lousy cup of gin?" She giggled.

            "Well!" Hawk tried his best to sound offended. "I'd like to see you make better."

            "I would," she leaned in close and squinted at Hawk competitively. "But I don't remember how." She grinned through the fog around her, and they both started laughing without really knowing why. "Friends?" She thrust out her hand at Hawkeye and tipped a little.

            He took it and shook it firmly. This certainly was a step in the right direction.

            "Friends."

            And without some much as a affirming nod she quickly, and soundlessly, passed out.


	4. Beef Catcher

The next morning came, and she was up before the sun. Groggy, tired and the proud owner of a bad hangover, but she was up none-the-less. Bernie was well into making breakfast when a knock came at the kitchen door.  
"Come in!"  
"Heya Bernie, you've got a delivery." Radar poked in and then out. "Can you get the door for me?"  
"Sure thing. What is it?" She held the door open as Radar lugged a moderately sized crate through the door.  
"Can't tell, but it's got your name on it. It's from someone named Captain Reidwilier." The crate made a sharp thudding noise when Radar set it down. "Saaaay... isn't that the same last name as the General. Think they're related?"  
"Yes, in fact, I know they are." Her hand couldn't bring itself to touch the wooden crate. She was about to tell Radar to take it out of her sight when she caught the faint smell of strong coffee. "Thank you for bringing this out Radar. Would you happen to know who I would talk to if I needed to make a call?"  
"Yes Ma'am. That would be me." He brushed himself off. "Do you need to?"  
"Not right now, but I'd like to... thank, the person who sent me this. It's coffee, completely un-ground, and very much unmilitary. It's the real stuff." She looked for something to pry open the top. "Would you like some?"  
"Gosh! Really?"  
"I'll brew you up a little, all your own. I'm gonna make a big pot for everyone, but it's better in small batches." Crow bar in hand she paused. "Wanna share a pot?"  
"Oh, would I!" This kid was too much. She felt like patting him on the head or pinching his cheeks. Instead, she grinned at him conspiratorially.  
"Same here." The crow bar hit the top of the wood with a satisfying crack, and within minutes the smell of real brewed coffee filled the camp. But with the warm smell came the cold tone of the droning choppers over the horizon. Radar was out the door before she could even tell what the reason for his rush was, but when she heard them Radar poked his head back in and apologized. "It's fine Radar, a rain check. I'll save you a pot, scouts honor."  
  
"Where do you suppose she got it from?" Charles mused over his patient.  
"Connections with the General I suppose." Potter said as he started down a weaving piece of three-oh silk. "I really don't want to know. It seems to good to be G.I."  
"Here's to the smell of the finest Columbian coffee of the American army in Korea," BJ raised scalpel. "By whatever means it got here."  
"It came in a crate addressed to her this morning." Klinger hefted the prone body of a writhing patient onto the table. "Radar delivered it himself. Says it came from a Captain Reidweiller." In a tall voice he added, as if he had thought of the notion all on his own, "No doubt a relation to the general."  
"Pierce, how long have you been on that kid?" Colonel Potter half admonished half concerned.  
"Too long. He's got a complications in his complications!" Pierce squinted at an oozing bowel angrily. "Suction!" The nurse next to him promptly responded. "The smell of that coffee isn't doing much good either." He groaned. His mood had done nothing but grow more brooding with the sudden in-flow of wounded and the feeling he'd thought had gone several days before suddenly returning, and at the worst time.  
  
It was a quiet breakfast that morning, and quite a bit of food sat cold on the kitchen counter set for disposal. Everyone had had something to do with the wounded that kept coming in, and eating didn't seem to be a pastime enjoyed by many around here. Bernie sighed and got plates ready to deliver to post-op for the boys who may be able to eat. If the soldiers stationed here weren't going to enjoy her food, some one sure as hell had to. She waited a few minutes for an enlisted man to show and take the food off her hands, but no one did. So, with a vigor that wasn't too hard to muster she hefted the plates herself and headed off towards the towering metal and khaki amalgamation on her own.  
"Could you please tell me how I know who can eat what?" A prim woman, with gorgeous blonde hair pinned back very neatly started when Bernie entered the room and then scowled slightly in annoyance.  
"It's on their charts, here" she thrust a finger at a clipboard hanging at the end of each bed. She gave Bernie a good once over and then squinted at her. "I don't believe I know you, Sergeant."  
"Mess Sergeant Bernie Owens Ma'am. I'd salute, but there doesn't seem to be a place to set my trays." She grinned sheepishly, but did her best to look respectful. Suddenly, the woman changed colors of kindness and offered to take several of the trays. "Thank you, um..."  
"Major Margret Houlihan, head nurse." She smiled warmly with a marked pride in her position. "I must tell you, dinner last night was wonderful."  
"You have no idea how good that is to hear," Bernie shifted the lighter load of trays in her hands. "I was beginning to think that no one around here eats."  
"Not when there's work to be done!" The Major quipped and immediately set about to distributing the trays. Bernie raised a brow and set to the other side of the room the Major wasn't blanketing already. There weren't many would could eat, mostly boys with shrapnel in their legs or other parts. An occasion stomach wound or unconscious boy were obviously impossible to serve. It wasn't long before everyone who could have a tray did, but a particular boy caught her attention.  
"Arms out of commission, solider?" She caught a stool and hunkered down next to the boy who hadn't touched his tray.  
"As a matter of fact, they are." He grinned at her and held out both of his bandaged hands. "Burn." He stated matter-of-factly.  
"Want me to get a nurse so you can eat?"  
  
"They're all busy," he shrugged. And they were, hustling with a look akin to a beehive. "I'm not very hungry anyway."  
"Now don't say that! It's as if you don't like the food, and that's just a plain hurtful thing to say to the girl who made it. Here" She took up a fork full and pressed it at him, "take this for example. Took me five hours just to make this one."  
"I don't think so." He was too busy eying her doubtfully to bother with what was going in his mouth.  
"Honest. Here, see, you're eating just fine." She shoveled another forkful into his mouth and smiled.  
"I guess so." He grinned and chewed. "It's good to get hot food again I guess. I've been out on the road for almost, well, I'd say just over two weeks now."  
"With the way your wearing your skin like that I'd say at least two and a half!" She continued to feed him and talk. "What would your mother say if you came home looking all skin and bones like this? She'd have my hide!"  
"My mother doesn't know you ma'am."  
"And she won't know you either if I have my way. You eat every last bite of this and get horribly fat. Orders."  
The tray was gone with a few more kind jokes, and she stood and brushed herself off. She saw the Major checking his chart, as well as the faint signs of a deep fatigue that was being desperately covered by a bit of well-placed make-up.  
"Say, Major? Would you mind if I brought you a cup of coffee?" She touched the womans shoulder and heard her bark.  
"Certainly not! I mean, no. I mean..." The woman shook her head and rubbed one temple. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"  
"A cup of coffee. Is it okay if I bring one in here for you?"  
"That's fine Sergeant, no need to go to any trouble."  
"Trouble or not I'm bringing one in here, I'm just wondering if it's allowed." Bernie shrugged and eyed a few empty trays that needed to be gathered. She excused herself and collected them, only to be stopped by the Major on her way out the door.  
"A cup of coffee would be nice Sergeant, thank you."  
"Coming right up!" She hustled her way back to the mess tent and quickly prepared several mugs and with an awkward balancing act made her way back. There where more people out in the compound now, and she assumed the worst must be over.  
"Here you are." She set down the trayful at the desk and picked up one for the Major. She assumed that a look of what might have been gratefulness passed across the woman's face. Several Nurses cluttered around the desk, each taking their own swigs of the coffee and moaning in delight.  
"I smelt it all the way from here, but I thought it was a dream. Fresh coffee! Real, fresh coffee!"  
"Nurse!" A cry from across the room came from a familiar voice. "Margaret!" The Major almost slammed down her mug and bolted across the room. Bernie couldn't hear exactly what the urgent mumbling was about from where she was at the nurses desk, but she new it was Captain Pierce, and that something was seriously wrong with one of the patients.  
Suddenly, everything was quite, and a nearby nurse caught a corpsman by the arm and muttered something in a low tone. The crowd of nurses slowly dispersed, no one really feeling like drinking much anymore and she saw the Captain sitting over a bunk and watched as two men entered the room to take the former patient from his bed. She stared at him, both motionless, a something rose up in the pit of her stomach.  
Death was never so close.  
  
Something steamed near his right cheek and when he turned he saw the blank face of Sergeant Bernie staring down at him.  
"Coffee," she offered meekly. "You look..." she was going to say 'dead,' but caught herself. "Exhausted."  
He didn't say a word as he took the mug and sniffed it passively.  
It was funny. She had nothing to say in a situation like this. She wanted more than anything to just reach out and touch a sholder, but she couldn't. But something didn't seem right, and he didn't exactly look like he wanted the comfort right now. He just stood up and slunk out of the room. She did the same, but in the other direction, picking up the mugs and heading back to cleanup breakfast.  
It was unnerving, to say the least. He'd been an asshole, and then a nice guy, but for a few moments back there she'd seen a very broken man. She'd thought she'd seen it all in this war. Kids who lost their buddies at the front, guys who got dear John's from their girls, and mooned for days. Even at the General's post she'd seen the bravest men reduced to the smallest children in a matter of mere moments, and she'd had something for each of them. A cake, or a batch of cookies, a few kind words, but most importantly a set of ears and a shoulder to lean on. Bernie knew best.  
She paused as a stretcher cut her off in her path and she watched as a hand fell out from beneath the blanket, clutching a fragment of bloody cloth. It suddenly occurred to Bernie that she knew nothing at all.  
  
She'd tried to make lunch a little heavier that day, seeing as how very few people had made it to breakfast, she figured the lot would be starving. And she was right.  
"I'm famished!" An officer grinned at her across his metal tray. She heaped a bit of extra on and winked.  
"Finish that and we'll talk about getting you some more." His grin was exactly what she waited for. That smile was why she loved cooking. She'd waitressed, bartended and did hundreds of other jobs across the country back home, but nothing made her happier than to see someone grin over something she'd made. She worked her hardest to make sure that every time someone went through her line they at least felt satisfied by what they ate. No one leaves without a full stomach and a warm feeling, was a motto she'd picked up in the south, and stuck to here in the east. It was what got her the job with the general.  
"Sergeant." It was the prim Major from that morning.  
"Good Afternoon ma'am." She heaped the Majors tray, who balked.  
"I can't eat that much!"  
"You're too skinny to eat any less!" Bernie protested and waved her aside, in an action that would've been disrespectful if the Major had been paying attention.  
"You think I'm too skinny?" Margaret wasn't sure whether to be outraged or pleased.  
"If I were you I'd be more afraid of a strong breeze than an artillery bombing ma'am." Bernie laid it on thick and then moved on to the next person.  
"Not so much please. I need to maintain my girlish figure." She looked up from the two hairy hands holding the tray in front of her and met a warm grinning face.  
"Klinger! Good afternoon." She gave him a fair portion, but less than she'd given the others at his wishes. "Thanks again for showing me to my tent last night."  
"Anytime. Including tonight, I've got KP, so I'll walk you home."  
"Sounds like a plan. See you when you're shift starts!"  
"Say, did you do something with you hair, looks nice." He motioned at her head, where she was still wearing her cap, but had let her hair down.  
"This old thing?" She grinned and let him pass through the line.  
  
"Reporting and ready," Klinger appeared in the doorway with a smart but slightly mocking salute.  
"Get ready with the oven then." She pointed a floury finger at a set of sheets. "Take what's in there out and then put those in. After twenty minutes repeat."  
"Can do." He raced over to where he needed to be and then stopped. "How'd you get this far with all this already?"  
"I just did." She wiped a hand across her face and the panicked. "Get those things out of the oven, now!" This wasn't good, she was raising her voice.  
"Whoops, sorry." He shrunk a little and took up the food, quickly shifting what needed to be out, out, and what needed to be in, in.  
"Here, you'll need this," she tossed and apron to him with a smile and then motioned him over. He tied it on as he went to her side. "Okay, here's what you do. Take a bit of this in this bowl."  
"Is that meat?"  
"Uh huh. Take this meat, and place it right in the center of this dough square, and then do the same with the other bowl with the vegetables. I'll roll out the dough, and fold them after you've finished. Got it?"  
"Can do." He followed orders to a T. After a bit of working he asked, "so how did you this much done this quickly."  
"I've been thinking. I like to cook when I think, it helps the process." She'd been worried about the look on the Captain's face aft6er the death in post-op for most of the day, and about the package that had come from Reidweiller.  
"I know how you feel. When I need to really give a thought the twice over, I sew." He nodded, but continued to mechanically place the meat and veggies.  
"Did you sew that dress?"  
"Most all of what I wear, I made." He shrugged. "It passes the time I guess."  
"It's a beautiful thing, Klinger! Do you plan to keep making dresses after the war?"  
"Now see here!" He suddenly stopped what he was doing. "I plan on doing no such thing!"  
"Why not!" She touched the hem of his collar, "you're wonderful at it."  
"Where I come from it just doesn't work that way. It isn't right for a guy to be making stuff like dresses."  
"Where exactly do you come from?"  
"Toledo, Ohio" His face glowed. The look of love and longing that passed over his face made Bernie feel a little jealous. She never really had a town she could think of in the way he was right now.  
"And they don't have tailors in Toledo Ohio?"  
"Oh sure, but I couldn't be one of them."  
"Why not?" she pushed.  
"I don't know how!" Klinger threw the meat into the dough with more force than Bernie cared to see being taken with her food.  
"I disagree. Pass me the flour, would you?" She pointed at the container of it on his left. "Besides, why don't you take a course in it through the mail, I'm sure we could find something that would work."  
"Maybe," he shrugged, and then changed the conversation. "So what is it that had you thinking so much you made enough food for an army."  
"Making enough food for an army is my job" she laughed, "but I wasn't really thinking about anything important. Heavy stuff, like death and war, but thoughts like that seem to be inherent here."  
"I guess so." Klinger raised his eyebrows at her. "Those are pretty heavy. What brought them on?"  
"I saw a man die in the Post op today." It was hard not to sound affected. She didn't mention Captain Pierce. "I guess it just shook me up a little."  
"I don't blame you. Did you have a reason for being in Post-op?"  
"Delivering breakfast. I brought coffee for all the nurses when someone shouted out and there was this buzzing for a moment and then... nothing. A very terrible sort of silence." She sighed. "In the past two days I've seen more carnage and death than I ever thought I'd see in my life. The front was just this passive 'being' people talked about either in booming brave tones or hushed secretive ones. It was never anything real to me until this morning."  
"I know how you feel." Klinger sympathized. "It seems a ways off now, but I went through the same thing when I got here. A lot of people feel that way." He patted her on the shoulder lightly and when she looked up at him with a sad smile he wrapped his arm around her and squeezed. "You never really get used to it, but all that means is your human, and there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all."  
  
"Somedaaaaay, when I'm awfully low... when the world is cooooold!" Bernie bounded in the kitchen with an empty food 'bin' in tow and several utensils clattering around inside of it. She felt like singing.  
"What is wrong with you? I'm beat!" Klinger sluffed in after her, weighed down by several more empty bins.  
"I love it! It's all gone, every last bit!" She threw her things into a large sink of waiting soapy water, and took Klinger's, throwing them to the same fate. "Did you see all the smiles. The talking over their food. Wasn't it great?" She grabbed the corporal's shoulders and grinned. "We made those smiles Klinger! Only food does that to people!"  
"Hey, I guess you're right." Klinger started to grin slightly on his own, "but your still crazy. You've got to be beat."  
"Crazy says the man in the black pumps! I'm not tired at all. I feel like dancing!" She giggled. "But there aren't any nightclubs around here, are there."  
"No, but I do know where we can find a jukebox and some floor space."  
"Klinger, are you asking me to go dancing!" She chided.  
"Is that a problem?"  
"A big one!" she threw up her hands and laughed. "Who'll lead?" Klinger joined her laughter and lead her out the door. "Whoop! Hold on, let me grab some cookies."  
"Cookies?" Klinger followed her with an exasperated look as she ran through the kitchen and threw open a few doors, searching. "We're going dancing and you stop to get cookies?" Bernie shrugged.  
"You have something against cookies?"  
"Not necessarily, it's just..."  
"Then shut up and walk me to where the music is playing."  
  
"Pardon me," they'd been bumped into, and the friendly sound of BJ Hunnicut's voice sounded very near her ear. "Well, hello Bernie, fancy bumping into you here."  
"Captain." She nodded. "It's a wonderful night for dancing don't you think?" They'd been dancing for almost half an hour and her head was spinning. Klinger was a stitch and she couldn't keep her ribs from aching. Her feet were beginning to have problems of their own, and with her sense of euphoria still high she pleaded that they take a seat.  
"Here, we'll take this table, I'll get us some drinks. What goes good with cookies?" Klinger chided.  
"I don't know, but I'll see how beer works out."  
"Two beers then, I'll be right back." He took off and she reached into her bag and pulled out the brown sack of baked goods.  
"Planning to stay here long?" BJ settled into the chair across from her.  
"I'm sorry?" She didn't understand until he pointed at the paper bag and said,  
"You packed a lunch?"  
"Oh, no! Dessert." She carefully opened the bag and let him peer in. "Want one?"  
"Don't mind if I do." He bit into one and she grinned at the way a few grains of sugar clung to his mustache. His eyes rolled back and he smiled. "Mm! Now these are good. What do you call them?"  
"Sugar cookies. It's been awhile?"  
"Too long, obviously. Peg bakes all the time, but everything she makes never quite seems to make the long trip here in one piece." Bernie remembered the way BJ had loving described his family the night before and felt a warmth settle over her. The thought of a loving family always seemed to make her choke up.  
"Then have another, they're not made with the love a family might send, but I try." She smiled and grabbed one of own after BJ had taken a second. "Say, Beej, do mind if I ask you something."  
"Shoot."  
"How's Captain Pierce doing after this morning? I was there when that boy... he seemed to have taken it pretty hard." BJ stopped munching and considered the cookie in his hand very seriously before taking another slow bite.  
"Hawkeye? He's been brooding all day. Which isn't that out of the ordinary." BJ shrugged and took another bite. "I tried to get him to come with me tonight, but I guess he wanted to rest. He'll be fine. By tomorrow morning he should be completely back to normal." Bj pointed at the bag. "Mind if I take a few of these for some of the others?"  
"Actually, I was hoping to get rid of them all. Here," she took a few for Klinger and handed the rest of the bag to BJ. "Make sure they find a happy home."  
"Thanks, I see that they do." BJ stood up but then made a face. "Uh oh, looks like your dance partner found another date." Sure enough, Klinger was on the floor with someone else. He seemed to be enjoying himself so Bernie didn't mind in the least. She was tired as hell anyway.  
"Ah well, it's like they say, a girl and her date in a skirt are soon parted. I was thinking about heading back to my tent anyway. Good night."  
"G'night. And thanks again for these" He held up the bag.  
"Anytime!" She waved and yelled slightly as she made her way through the crowd and out the door. At this time of night everyone was either asleep or at the officers club, so the light on at the 'swamp' puzzled her. She stopped when she passed by and knocked softly. She could see the faint halo of Hawkeye against the light.  
"Come in." It was little more than a mutter.  
"Hey, I just wanted to stop by and give you these, sort of a 'thank you' for last night." She held out the cookies she'd saved for Klinger who had no use for them now.  
"What are they?" He mumbled.  
"Rocks. Mud. Kimchee. What do they look like?" He looked up at her, to the cookies, and then back at her as he took them from her hands.  
"Thank you." He set them down on the table next to his bed and settled back.  
"Did you eat dinner?"  
"No."  
"You should've. You're too skinny."  
"You seem to think everyone's too skinny. Margaret's on cloud nine from all the slim talk you've been giving her."  
"I think it because everyone /I too skinny." She grinned a little, but then killed it when she saw the look on Hawkeye's face. He was in no mood to be jovial. "You should eat the cookies, they're best fresh."  
"I'm not really in the mood, but thanks anyway." He finally gave her a small smile, that was more for her sake than his. She could take the hint, he didn't want to be comforted. She turned and pushed on the door when his voice suddenly stopped her. "Where'd you get the sugar for these anyway?"  
With her back to him she muttered, "an old friend sent it with some coffee." And with that she was back in the night and made her way to her tent under the light of a slowly filling moon.  
  
Breakfast went smooth enough and everyone was able to eat. The casualties didn't come until around noon and even then there were only a few of them. However, among those few was one who would change Bernie's day unlike any other casualty could have.  
"Bernie." Klinger popped his head in the door and looked around. At the sound of his voice she looked up from her baking and wiped her fore arm across an itch on her nose, leaving a track of white flour.  
"What can I do for you Klinger."  
"There's someone who wants to see you. He says he's a friend of yours."  
Bernie stiffened. Please, she thought, don't let it be him, don't let him have followed me hear. The packages I can handle, but personal appearances, it's too much.  
Quietly, she asked his name.  
"Cutter I think." Klinger narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you all right?"  
"He's here!" She ripped off her apron and almost ran over Klinger as she made her way out into the open compound as he trailed behind her, panting. "Where is he? I don't see him?"  
She had expected to see him in a Jeep or standing around, loitering and waiting for her. He was here on a visit wasn't he? What she hadn't expected was when Klinger pointed to the post-op door. He hadn't needed to say a thing. She just took off, tears fighting there way through he jagged breaths.  
"Cutter!" She flew through the door and around the fabric hanging, searching frantically for his face. And then she saw him. "No," she gasped in horror. He was flat on a bed, laid out, wounded, but smiled straight at her like he wasn't in the same bed that death had visited only a night earlier.  
"Hey there you. Bet you didn't expect to see me here." He sat up a little as she rushed to his side, angry tears falling down her face as she wiped her hands over him, barely believing he was there and doing her own, futile, check for gashes and wounds a doctor might have missed. "It's just a broken leg and a nice burn, that's all." He pulled her into a large hug to comfort her and to stop her probing.  
"What the hell have you done!" She grasped blindly for a stool and collapsed into the seat when she found one.  
"It was a mine, that's all. It wasn't even a very big one." He grinned sheepishly, "I was just trying to catch a cow and..."  
"The hell you were!" Bernie roared and then received a look from the nurse on staff that made her repeat the same sentence, only in a whisper. "If you want beef, you requisition beef. It's not that hard."  
"When the General wants beef I requisition it, when I want beef, I have to catch it."  
"No cow is worth losing a leg over. Do you know a man died in that bed last night? Died! And now you're there. It's a bad omen Cutter, very bad." She shook a shaking finger at his face, and he grabbed it.  
"Bernie, you've never been one for superstition, please don't start now." Her took her in his arms once again and she could feel his chest rumble as he laughed. "I'm supposed to be the one getting comfort you know. I'm the burn victim."  
"You don't deserve comfort." She muttered and wiped her nose on his sleeve to accent the point.  
"Um, sorry to break this up, but you're over-exciting the patient." Hawkeye's voice sounded at the end of the bed with a thick hint of innuendo Bernie chose to ignore. Instead she sat up and wiped the rest of the tears from her eyes.  
"Hey Doc! Have you met my friend Bern?"  
"It's Bernie, you jerk" she resisted the urge to hit his smug face. "And of course we've met." She turned to Pierce and asked "is he going to be alright?"  
"He's lucky. Most people don't come out of a mine blast this whole. Fortunately the cow set it off an not him."  
  
"Waste of beef." Cutter muttered loud enough for her to hear and she gave his a warning look.  
"I'm leaving now Cutter. Is their anything I can do for you while you rest?"  
"Well my mother used to make me soup, I can't remember what kind though."  
"Don't worry about that," Bernie grinned, her teeth tight together and her lips strained. "I'll just call her as ask her what it was she cooked the last time her son got blown up, by a cow." 


End file.
